by steve higgs
‘Okay.’
‘I'm not finished.' He insisted gently. I folded my top lip over my bottom one to stop myself from speaking. ‘I want you to know that I am falling for you. I can't control it. I have never had this before, never felt feelings like this before.' My heart was pounding in my chest. ‘I wanted you to know that. I doubt we are on the same page. I worried about telling you in case I scared you away, but it's done now.' He lapsed into silence.
How on earth do I reply?
‘Me too.’ I squeaked. I couldn’t explain how I felt at the moment. Lighter than air? Giddy? Something like that.
‘Amanda, I want to see you again. We both have busy lives, let’s make time for each other. I will be available when you are, even if I have to cancel a flight.’
I briefly considered driving directly to his office in Dartford, so I could shag him on his desk. Allowing my horniness to rule my life, make me late for work and all the deceptiveness that would have to go with it was not a road I would let myself go down though.
‘Tonight. How about tonight.’
‘Text me a time to pick you up and I will be there.’
‘Okay.’
‘There’s one more thing.’ He said. ‘Something I want you to consider.’
‘Yes?’ He was clearly holding back from saying it for some reason.
‘You don’t need to work. I can take care of you.’
‘What?’ I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. It had sounded like he suggested I quit my job and have him pay my bills.
‘You don’t have to work, Amanda. We never talk about it, but I earned more during this conversation than you earn all year. I’m not bragging. It is just how it is. If you wanted to be done with paying bills and…’
‘I’m going to stop you right there, Brett.’ I was failing to keep the irritation from my voice.
‘I’m sorry.’ He shot back instantly. ‘I have overstepped.’
Damned right you did.
‘Please forget I brought it up.’ He bid me good day, promised to be waiting and let me go.
In the quiet of the car, I thought about him. His comment about not having to work was troubling but at least he had withdrawn it rather than push the concept. I was too independent to be a kept woman. Ignoring that though, I was falling for him and it was mutual. I shook my head in a physical act to break my train of thought.
Get a grip, Amanda.
I needed to find out more about him. If this was how we felt already, I needed to have a proper conversation about life and kids and plans. If there was a deal breaker out there, I wanted to find it now, not six months after the honeymoon.
My musings had taken me all the way to work where I parked my car in what I had already come to think of as its usual spot. I opened the back door with a key and closed it behind me. As the door closed, I saw Jack’s car swing into the carpark. They could come to the front door.
I silently acknowledged that I was taking my anger over their behaviour further than I needed to. I could have held the door for them. I would consider calming down if they didn’t do anything to annoy me in the next half hour.
‘Hi, James.’ I called out as I went into the office.
‘Good morning, Amanda.’ His voice came back. ‘There are clients to see you.’
I had called out to James as I came into the office but had gone into my office to hang up my coat and put down my handbag so hadn’t seen the couple huddled on one sofa. I walked over to them now.
‘Good morning.’ I offered them my hand as they both stood to meet me. ‘Amanda Harper. How may I help you?’
The pair had been holding hands and projected the familiarity that one sees with long-married couples. He looked to be about fifty years old and was balding and had a surprisingly round pot-belly protruding from his ill-fitting suit. Next to him, his wife bore no makeup and had styled her hair in a manner that I assumed was easy to keep. It was short with a square-cut fringe. She wore slacks and a coat and running shoes on her feet and looked barely feminine.
He spoke for both of them, ‘Maurice Brown and this is my wife Shelagh.’
James had left his desk and joined us by the sofas. ‘Maurice and Shelagh have a zombie cat.' He explained. I glanced at him, but he was carefully avoiding betraying any emotion or opinion in his neutral expression.
‘Did you bring it with you?’ I asked, looking around the floor for a carrier.
‘Oh, goodness no.’ Maurice replied shocked. ‘No, we can’t.’
I said, ‘Oh.’ And waited for him to expand. He wasn’t going to though and his wife was yet to speak so I asked, ‘Why is that?’
‘Because it's dead.' Mrs. Brown revealed in a dread tone.
‘Um.’ I said. It was all I could come up with as a reply.
‘It died two weeks ago.' James explained, once again providing some background facts they had already given. Tempest always said he didn't get many drop-ins. Usually, people emailed or called, but we only moved to this office three days ago so perhaps our position on the High Street would attract more clients that would see the sign outside and decide to pop inside.
Maurice picked up the narrative once more. ‘Mogsy, that's the cat's name, died two weeks ago yesterday, but a week after he died, he started reappearing in our garden again.'
‘Are you sure it’s the same cat?’ I asked the obvious question.
‘Absolutely.' Snapped Mrs. Brown. ‘Same collar, same eyes but it looks dead now and it hisses at me whenever I try to get near it.'
Listening to Mrs. Brown was creeping me out though her zombie cat sounded like most other cats to me. ‘Do you have a picture?' I asked her.
She rummaged in her handbag. Behind her, the office front door opened again as Jack, Uncle Knobhead and Bob came in. ‘James could you escort these gentlemen to my office please?’
As he dealt with them, Mrs. Brown continued to rummage. ‘Oh, here you are.' She said as she took a small white envelope from her bag. It contained two photographs. The first was of her with a large black cat in her arms. She looked to be a decade younger, but the haircut and dress sense was the same. The cat looked young and healthy with a lustrous coat of jet-black fur.
The second photograph was of a manky, flea-bitten cat sitting at the foot of a garden fence. Its lips were drawn back in a classic cat's hiss and it looked ready to take someone's face off. I got what she was saying about it looking dead. It looked dirty as if it had just been dug up. It had a mangled ear and one eye looked to be milky from cataracts. It looked old.
The stand out feature for me though was that it wasn't even the same colour as Mogsy. It was a mottled grey tabby cat.
I held the two pictures next to one another and showed them to the couple. Trying to keep any bewildered amusement from my voice I questioned again whether they were sure it was the same cat.
‘Of course, it's the same cat.' Snapped Mrs. Brown, irritation spiking. ‘Why do people keep asking if it is the same cat?'
I had to point out the obvious. ‘Because they don’t look even slightly similar. One is black, and one is a tabby.’
‘Maurice we are leaving.’ She announced as she snatched the photographs back from my unresisting hands.
Maurice just looked lost, but he moved soon enough when she shoved him toward the door. ‘Oh, err, thank you for your time.' He managed weakly as he was propelled backward.
I could hear his wife berating him for bothering to thank me as the door swung shut. I wondered how often we would have to deal with crazy people walking in off the street. When they emailed, we could respond to politely advise that we would not be taking the case. It was less easy when they were stood in front of you and you had to listen to their story to determine that their case was a waste of time.
Tempest was clear that he didn’t want the firm to investigate ridiculous cases. There were enough ones with merit around, that we didn’t need to charge people money for the ridiculous ones.
James was making coffee for my guests
. ‘Do you want one?’ He asked, holding up a cup.
‘Yes please.’ I helped him carry the cups back to my office.
As he set the two he was carrying down, he said, ‘I have some information pertaining to the case when you are ready.’ I also had more that I needed him to research, not least of which was the cryptic message I got from the hoody last night. James didn’t wait around to see what Jack had to show me though.
Bob had placed his camera on my desk and was holding an HDMI cable. ‘Alright if I plug it in?’ He asked while miming plugging it in.
‘Sure.’
I was curious enough to let Jack show me his footage if that was what I was about to see.
‘This is the raw footage from Milosz Kyncl. He took it on his iPhone yesterday late afternoon, thankfully before it got dark.’
On the screen was a grass bank, which the person holding the phone was scaling. There was a voice rabbitting away in what I guessed was Polish. The grass bank was only a few feet high and dropped away on the other side, where a wide band of low-level meadow led to a woodland. Right in the middle of the shot was an alien spaceship.
What else could it be? The unseen Polish driver's voice was jabbering faster now, excitement and nerves showing. The phone was not being held steady as he moved about but when he stopped moving the… spaceship, might as well call it that, was very clear.
It was shiny like chrome, about six or seven feet tall at a guess and maybe ten feet long. There was a thick mist around it like you get with dry ice and lights beneath the vessel were illuminating the mist in an eerie way.
Then a figure emerged from behind the vessel, and the driver threw himself back down the bank to escape. The camera tumbled with him as he rolled over and over then came upright as he found his feet and stood. He was babbling in Polish still as he climbed into the cab of his truck, the screen suddenly showed the ceiling of the truck cabin’s interior – he had put it down facing up. We heard the engine roar to life then a hand covered the screen and the footage cut off as he stabbed the button to end the video recording.
I had been leaning toward the screen, engrossed in what I was seeing. Standing up straight, I caught Jack’s expression – he looked triumphant.
‘We have over three million hits on the website since I uploaded some short clips of the footage last night. Bob and I worked on the editing all night ready for when the press asks for it. The phone is going to ring any second.’ He claimed, taking out his phone and placing it on my desk.
All four of us looked at it. Nothing happened.
‘Any minute.’ Jack corrected himself.
Still nothing.
‘Dammit.’ He swore.
I had to admit that the footage was compelling. The world would want to speak with Milosz Kyncl and I wondered if Jack had considered that he might not be the star of this. Telling myself that it was not a spaceship I was seeing told me what though? If it wasn’t a spaceship, it was a…
I couldn’t answer that yet, but I was going to.
‘So, what are you going to do with this?’ I asked Jack.
He flared his eyebrows as he grinned. ‘Propel myself to international stardom, babe. The next episode of the show will air tonight to millions of live-streaming viewers. You can still be a part of it, you know.’
Uncle Knobhead spoke up, ‘Go on, Amanda. It’ll be really cool for us to both be on the show.’
Jack gave him a sideways glance. Jack had no intention of putting my scruffy, dopey Uncle on his show. He was just using him in the belief that it would influence me.
‘I don’t think so.’ I replied.
‘That clearly wasn’t a no.’ Jack replied chirpily.
‘It most certainly wasn’t.’ Added Uncle Knobhead.
‘No.’ This time I made the answer clear.
Jack heard my answer, glanced at me, grinned again and said, ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
Bob was unplugging his camera and they were packing up to leave.
‘Where are you going?’ I asked suspiciously.
‘To prepare, babe. If the press doesn’t call today, they will after tonight’s show.’ His confidence was infectious.
I stepped out of the way to let them pass.
My Uncle stopped as he drew level with me at the door to my office. ‘I’m going to go with Jack. Is that okay?’
God, yes.
What I thought and what I said were not the same thing. ‘Of course, Uncle. I hope he lets you have a spot on his show.’
As Jack walked away, I thought of a question I wanted to ask him. something that had been troubling me from the start. ‘Jack.’ He turned to see what I wanted, his ever-hopeful expression probably expecting me to say I had changed my mind and would love to be on his show. ‘How is it that you came to be at Brompton Farm on Monday? How did you know about any of it?’
‘The Supernatural Times, love. I read about the events there on Monday morning. Bob and I were on the road an hour later.’
It made sense, I suppose. I nodded that I acknowledged his answer and let him go.
When they were out of the office I went over to James. ‘What have you got for me?’
Research. Friday, November 11th 1000hrs
‘Well, you gave me quite a list of subjects to explore. What I have is something interesting about the farm manager Gordon McIntosh.’
I joined James around his side of the desk so I could see what he was looking at.
‘He is on LinkedIn and his status says he is openly looking for investors. Look a little further and he is planning to set up a farm. It doesn’t say where, but I could call him posing as a potential investor and see what I can learn.’
I considered that for a moment. He was unhappy where he was and felt… what? Undervalued? No longer in charge? Undermined? It could be all of them or his decision to leave, if that is what it was, could be motivated by pay or the ill-health of a family member or anything really. Whatever it was, it wasn't incriminating. But, if he wanted investors, was he trying to buy Brompton Farm? Was he poisoning the cows to make the milk worthless in a bid to drive the current owners bankrupt? I would not put it beyond him.
‘Okay. What else?’
‘Well, there is more information about him in the pack I sent you. Background stuff mostly such as job history, marital status. Mr. McIntosh is an Army veteran, like Tempest. He served in the Falklands war as a helicopter pilot.'
I filed that away for later. It didn’t seem relevant.
‘One other thing I turned up pertains to the deceased.’
‘Go on.’
‘Tamara and Glen were not married. You referred to them several times as a married couple, but they weren’t. Semantics possibly, but Tempest tells me to give him all the information because one never knows what might be important later. Also, Tamara was still working in the pharmaceuticals industry.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I didn’t know if that was important or not, but again, you said that they were farmers and that it had been Tamara’s dream to pursue this lifestyle. Well, she was still working away a lot as she went around the country selling drugs.’
I thought about that for a moment, trying to make sense of the new information or to work out what it meant. ‘Can you stick with this? See what else you can turn up about the farmers and their staff?’
James said, ‘Sure.’ Without looking up from the screen.
‘I’ll let you know when I find something.’ His fingers started dancing on the keyboard. I took a pace to my left since I was standing right next to James and in his personal space.
I called Patience. ‘Are you alone now?’ I asked.
‘Yes, honey. Patience is alone. Are we off to bother young men?’
‘Sort of. I’ll explain on the way.’ I promised to collect her in half an hour and went to collect my coat.
Shoving my belongings back into my handbag, I tried to reassure myself that all I needed to do was keep chipping away at the pieces. There seemed to be
so many of them though. So many facets to the case. Crop circles, lights in the sky, alien spacecraft and an alien with a freeze gun and the luminous milk that was the one I really needed to solve if I was to be of help to Kieron and the others. I was off to force information out of the two college kids, but I had no idea if they were even involved and whether the appearance of the crop circles had anything to do with anything else.
I hoped I would find out soon enough.
I called goodbye to James and got into my car. On the way to collect Patience, I ran through the case in my head some more.
The crop circles were the first odd thing to happen way back in September. The crop was all cut and stored now so no one could make the circles even if they wanted to. Then the milk, the lights, and the spacecraft had all happened at more or less the same time. How was each of these elements connected?
If I took the line that nothing alien or extra-terrestrial was occurring, then I needed only to figure out what was causing each of the events. That was the difficult bit for sure, and what about Tamara? Someone had killed her. The police were doing something, I was certain of that. I just didn't know what it was and to my knowledge, other than quiz some of the farm hands, they hadn't actively pursued the case.
I tried focusing on one bit at a time. Jack’s spaceship footage: It was compelling, but it had to be fake, right? I had seen Sci-fi movies, the effects utterly convincing. Was the spaceship just a well-made cardboard model? Was it clever CGI? If so, then who made it?
What was it Tempest always asks himself? Who stands to gain?
I wound that question around in my head. There was only one answer though – Jack. His Alien Quest show was a rubbish, third-rate internet show that was going nowhere. Would he fake an alien landing to boost his ratings? Probably, but did he have the resources? The thought that he might be behind it though was troubling. If he was guilty of faking the spaceship and the alien, was he also involved in the poisoned milk and the death of Tamara Mwangi?
I had arrived at Patience's apartment where she lived on the third floor and had seen me arrive. I caught her waving out the window that I should stay in the car. Presently, she waltzed out the front door of her block, her hips swaying as she sung along to a song she had caught in her head.